Left Behind

Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist, recently warned that the rise of Ebola signaled that we are living in the last days. Few people noticed. Christian filmmaker Paul Lalonde released an awful movie in October about the end of the world. Despite snagging Nicolas Cage for the lead role, Lalonde’s retooling of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s bestselling Left Behind books fell flat with audiences. Evangelical apocalypticism looks almost dead.

In theaters now, Nicholas Cage is taking us to the beginning of the end of time. A time when passengers vanish mid-flight, cars lose their drivers, and those who aren’t raptured face a violent world and a monumental choice: follow the Antichrist toward destruction or follow the righteous and be saved from the world. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and no one’s feeling fine. Years ago, when the Left Behind series topped the bestseller lists, a friend and colleague of mine was on fire over the books.